Ostracized no more: America’s disenfranchised 99% begin to form their own group.

Two years ago, I was excited to see Barack Obama elected President because I had listened closely to his campaign speeches and I assumed that I would now have a meaningful voice in how my government was being run. I assumed that we would see an immediate decrease to America’s warmongering, domestic spying and fossil-fuel dependence, for example. Since that election, though, I’ve witnessed Mr. Obama cave-in to right wing demands on numerous major issues. I’ve seen Wall Street “reform” that allows bigger “banks” than ever. I’ve seen health care “reform” that shoved single payer under the table and consisted of a sell-out to for-profit monopolistic insurers, without any meaningful price controls. Government spying and secrecy are more prevalent than ever. I’ve seen big business spend more money more flagrantly than ever to purchase politicians, including Barack Obama. As all of this has transpired, I keep being reminded of George Carlin’s words, (at the two-minute mark) that there is a “big club . . . and ain’t in it. . . . You and I are not in the big club." [More . . . }

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Bank of America’s latest assault on American taxpayers

At Common Dreams, former bank examiner Bill Black has written of a terrible (though anticipated) new development at the Bank of America. The bank has taken on enormous toxic debt from its holding company (BAC) in order to saddle American taxpayers with the bill, as the Federal Reserve winks and nods.

BAC continues to deteriorate and the credit rating agencies have been downgrading it because of its bad assets, particularly its derivatives. BAC’s answer is to “transfer” the bad derivatives to the insured bank – transforming (ala Ireland) a private debt into a public debt.
Bloomberg has been aggressively reporting the story. Here's a short description by Jonathan Weil:
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. is objecting to the transfers. That part is easy to understand: More risk for the retail lender means more risk for FDIC-insured deposits, which ultimately are backstopped by the U.S. government. The Fed, however, has signaled to the FDIC that it favors the transfers. Shifting the derivatives to the commercial lender may let Bank of America avoid collateral calls and termination fees stemming from the rating downgrade. Some Merrill clients may prefer having their contracts with the higher-rated unit. In short, the Fed’s priorities seem to lie with protecting the bank-holding company from losses at Merrill, even if that means greater risks for the FDIC’s insurance fund. . . . The entire story would be playing out in secret were it not for some unidentified whistleblowers who seem to have this crazy idea that the public should be informed about what the regulators and Bank of America are up to.
In his article, Weil makes it clear that all roads lead to American taxpayers picking of the tab, and it could run into the trillions. In fact, check the comments to Weil's article and you'll see the desperation, because the number being suggested is $75 TRILLION in derivatives, which Ben Bernacke has approved to be dumped on taxpayers, who don't have this money in any way shape or form (the U.S. only takes in $2 trillion in tax receipts each year). Thus, the Fed, a covey of criminal bankers, is in the process of attempting to destroy the FDIC and the American economic system in order to buy a bit more time for its big players (BAC is not alone; Morgan Chase is holding another $75 T in these fraudulent derivatives). What are "derivatives," the source of this immense debt? Bloomberg's Bob Ivry explains derivatives in his article that broke this scandalous decision to move Merrill derivatives to BAC's taxpayer insured banking unit:
Derivatives are financial instruments used to hedge risks or for speculation. They’re derived from stocks, bonds, loans, currencies and commodities, or linked to specific events such as changes in the weather or interest rates. Keeping such deals separate from FDIC-insured savings has been a cornerstone of U.S. regulation for decades, including last year’s Dodd-Frank overhaul of Wall Street regulation.
In these times, as the credit ratings of the big banks continue to slide, the objectives of the banks is always the same, but more intense than ever: Privatize the profit and socialize the losses.   The so-called banks have armies of corrupt accountants, lawyers and lobbyists working hard to find yet another way to make innocent taxpayers foot the bill for the the banks' immense amounts of debt that resulted from irresponsible gambling.  As William Black explains, the banks happily took on this gambling debt sharply, but now they want to dump in on people like you and me.  The Fed has given the nod because it is wholly corrupt in this adventure, contrary to the protests of the FDIC.  The bank management is giving the nod sharply contrary to fiduciary duties they owe to their shareholders and customers. This entire charade needs to be reported on the front page of every paper in America.  If Americans were better informed about the depth and scope of how they are being fleeced, we'd see hundreds of millions of Americans joining the #Occupy protests.

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Sixteen Trillion Dollars; Sixteen Tons

Sixteen is a number that rings a bell for me, because when I was a boy I used to listen to a song called "Sixteen Tons." It was a coal miner song expressing the pain and futility of endless work without the possibility of getting out of debt. The song was made famous by Tennessee Ernie Ford: Now I see that the number sixteen has come back into the news in the context of banks. This time, sixteen refers to a secret deal arranged by our government to prop up huge corrupt banks to the tune of $16 trillion dollars. We, the taxpayers would never have approved this deal if it had been made out in the open.  Nonetheless, we are now subsidizing these too-big-to-fail institutions for as long as any of us will live, and further, we've piled huge amounts of this debt onto the backs of our children. It's all part of a new spin on "family values": dumping unimaginable amounts of debt on our children, "justifying" this by the fact that the people who run corrupt banks bought Congress and asked for for this money.   Now our children will have to try to work off endless corporate debt.  My image is that we've just signed them up to work an old-fashioned coal-miner's job of the type described by Tennessee Ernie Ford. Alan Grayson recently included me in a mass emailing, where he puts the number sixteen into context:

Dear Erich: The Government Accountability Office (GAO) says that our Government has handed out $16 trillion to the banks. Let me repeat that, in case you didn’t hear me the first time. The GAO says that our Government HAS HANDED OUT $16 TRILLION TO THE BANKS. That little gem appears on Page 131 of GAO Report No. GAO-11-696. A report issued two months ago. A report that somehow seems to have eluded the attention of virtually every network, every major newspaper, and every news show. How much is $16 trillion? That is an amount equal to more than $50,000 for every man, woman and child in America. That’s more than every penny that every American earns in a year. That’s an amount equal to almost a third of our national net worth -- the value of every home, car, personal belonging, business, bank account, stock, bond, piece of land, book, tree, chandelier, and everything else anyone owns in America. That’s an amount greater than our entire national debt, accumulated over the course of two centuries. A $16 trillion stack of dollar bills would reach all the way to the Moon. And back. Twice. That’s enough to pay for Saturday mail delivery. For the next 5,000 years. All of that money went from you and me to the banks. And we got nothing. Not even a toaster. I have been patiently waiting to see whether this disclosure would provoke some kind of reaction. Answer: nope. Everyone seems much more interested in discussing whether or not they like the cut of Perry’s jib. Whatever a jib may be. In the next few weeks, I’m going to be writing more about this. But right now, I wanted to keep this really simple. Just give folks something to talk about when they’re standing next to the coffee maker. The Government gave $16 trillion to the banks. And nobody else is talking about it. Think about it. Think about what that means. Courage, Alan Grayson

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Senator Bernie Sanders proposes changes to America’s corrupt banking system

At Huffpo, Senator Bernie Sanders, who remains one of my heroes, points out that the secret bailout by the Federal Reserve makes the better-known bailout look tiny:

More than three years ago, Congress rewarded Wall Street with the biggest taxpayer bailout in the history of the world. Simultaneously but unknown to the American people at the time, the Federal Reserve provided an even larger bailout. The details of what the Fed did were kept secret until a provision in the Dodd-Frank Act that I sponsored required the Government Accountability Office to audit the Fed's lending programs during the financial crisis. As a result of this audit, the American people have learned that the Federal Reserve provided more than $16 trillion in low-interest loans to every major financial institution in this country, huge foreign banks, multi-national corporations, and some of the wealthiest people in the world. In other words, when Wall Street was on the verge of collapse, the federal government acted boldly, aggressively, and with a fierce sense of urgency to save our financial system from collapse with no strings attached.
The huge backdoor bailout is a slap in the face to American taxpayers, especially since the big Wall Street banks are bigger than ever and because they are taking more risks than ever, presumably emboldened by the fact that they are "too big to fail," and that the federal government will come bail them out yet again. Here's what Bernie Sanders proposes to clean up this despicable situation: 1) Break up the big banks. 2) Cap credit card interest rates ("Today, more than a quarter of all credit card holders in this country are paying interest rates above 20 percent and as high as 59 percent.") 3) Force the Federal Reserve to make low interest loans directly to small businesses. 4) Put an end to speculation that jacks up the price of petroleum products. 5) Demand that Wall Street invest in real businesses instead of "gambling on derivatives." 6) "Establish a Wall Street speculation fee on credit default swaps, derivatives, stock options and futures. Both the economic crisis and the deficit crisis are a direct result of the greed and recklessness on Wall Street." Sanders points out that there was such a fee (.2% tax on all sales and transfers of stock) from 1914 - 1966. Sanders points out that getting these measures passed will be enormously difficult, given that these Wall Street banks spent $5 billion on lobbying over the past decade.  Which leads to another enormous need: to get money out of politics.

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